Most climate skeptics accept the theory that a rise in atmospheric CO2 will cause a rise in terrestrial temperature. Where they differ from Warmists is in estimating the quantum of the temperature rise. Looking at both the theory and the data, skeptics think the effect of more CO2 will be so minute as to be probably undetectable.

There is however another camp of skeptics who think the whole theory is bunk. They think that a rise in CO2 CANNOT affect temperature. Such thinkers coalesce to some degree around the Principia Scientific publication run by John O'Sullivan. Their "Bible" is Slaying the Sky Dragon.

One would think that both types of skeptics would get along with one-another in perfect amiability but that is not always so. The "Slayers" tend to be rather shrill critics of the mainstream critics. In their dogmatism and hunger for consensus they seem rather like Warmists at times.

So I am a jellyfish. I take no side in the dispute. Either side could be right in my view. I think that Warmism has long ago left the realm of science and become a political creed of the Left. So the important thing is that both skeptical groups piss on global warming fears. Just as in politics generally, I think you have to have a big tent for your side to win the contest with the Left. And I would be happy to have a beer with anyone in the tent.

But I was not always a jellyfish. For a while the slayers had convinced me. I thought that global warming theory transgressed the first and second laws of thermodynamics. After a while, however, I concluded that those laws could be applied only to convective processes in the atmosphere, whereas global warming theory is about radiative heat transfer. At that point I had a small correspondence with theoretical physicist Lubos Motl and he assisted me towards a view that the theory could be expressed in a way not contrary to the law of physics.

So what I now make of the theory depends on the old law of the conservation of energy. Energy is not created or destroyed but just changes guise. So when energy (heat) from the sun hits the earth, that energy does not just vanish. It does a number of things and one of those things is that it bounces back in the direction whence it came. And when it hits a water or CO2 molecule it in turn bounces off that. But it will bounce in all dirtections so only a small portion of the bounced radiation will bounce back to hit the earth. And since CO2 molelcules are a tiny proportion of the atmosphere, you have only a small proportion of a tiny proportion of the heat being re-radiated to the surface by CO2 molecules. So the total effect must be very small indeed. So even in theory the Warmists are wrong to proclaim a detectable effect of CO2 levels.

And what the theoory says is of course exactly what we observe. Temperatures have remained stable over 17 years during which CO2 levels have risen sharply. So there has been no detectable effect of CO2 levels. Any effect has been too tiny to detect.

But in their typical way, one of the slayers had a go at me recently for my view that, even given their own theory, warmists are barking up the wrong tree. I reproduce the correspondence:

Spotted this sentence in your lead story today: "On the global warming theory as I see it, CO2 reflection is such a minor source of heating that the effects of variations in it SHOULD be so minuscule as to be undetectable ..." You've got a PhD, so where do you reckon the "warming" comes from then? Think a bit further and you can only come to one conclusion: in the open atmosphere, CO2 can only act as a coolant, never a warming agent. Provide me with just one piece of actual observed proof that there is any warming off atmospheric CO2.

I replied:

I am agnostic about the theory. The form of it that makes some sense draws on the law of conservation of energy. If back radiation from the earth hits something opaque in the atmosphere the energy should bounce and some of that should hit the earth. But since CO2 is a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, its effect should be tiny. That's the theory but reality could be different

The Slayer replied:

The entire basis of the "theory" you mention is incorrect, hence my email to you in the first place. The concept of "heating by back-radiation" is a myth, has never been observed in Nature and can in fact not exist! Imagine if such a heating mechanism did exist, we'd be able to build super-efficient heaters where for an input of 1kW we get 2kW out - or any wattage higher than the input. For sure, any effect off a tiny fraction is tiny, but the only effect that can be scientifically ascribed to adding any gas to the atmosphere is a cooling effect, never a warming effect. With CO2 being a radiatively active gas, it will in fact act as a super-coolant! Only when captured in a bottle will the walls of the bottle warm up more when CO2 is inside, because the re-radiated energy can not get out without first dumping its energy into the material of the bottle. Out in the open, that very same property will cause extra fast cooling of the CO2 molecule, where O2 and N2 can only rely on conductive and convective heatloss. Also remember that in the bigger picture, the sun dumps its heat onto the surface, the air then takes that heat and convects it upwards and sideways with wind - a heatloss situation at all times! Never can more heat be created by recycling the original solar heat - if only! Delayed cooling is not warming; that delay can at best increase the average temperature - a rather meaningless concept as all weather stations are measuring the air at some 5-7ft off the ground!

I replied:

I don't think you have grasped the law of conservation of energy. Where does the energy (heat) go when it hits a CO2 molecule?"

The Slayer replied:

Thanks Ray, there is no point to any further comms.

Does the brevity of the final reply mean that I won the argument? I think so but I also think that the important thing is to have the discussion. Winning and losing are not what science is about. And I am still open to conviction either way. I could be wrong!

Mrs Instapundit sends off a fiery reply below to the latest attempt to "psychologize" conservatives. Leftists have been doing that at least since 1950 and the amusing thing is that most of what the Leftists write is transparent projection: They accuse conservatives of what are their own faults -- hate, authoritarianism etc. So it is no wonder that their attempts to substantiate their accusations through actual psychological research eventually come to naught. Background here and here.

The "polarized mind" concept below is just the latest version of a very old accusation. On previous occasions it has been referred to by Leftists as "intolerance of ambiguity", "rigity" "dogmatism" and lack of "openness". When you know how closed off from evidence Leftists are, you can see why they project that on to conservatives. Background here -- JR.

So I received this press release about a newly released book by psychologist Kirk J. Schneider Ph.D:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRESS CONTACT

Lorna Garano

510-280-5397

lornagarano@gmail.com

A Psychologist Diagnoses the Tea Party-and other extremists threatening our world. In “The Polarized Mind: Why It’s Killing Us and What We Can Do about It,” Kirk J. Schneider Ph.D., calls for a new and deeper psychological understanding of our greatest political and social conflicts and those who drive them.

It’s easy for liberals to snicker at the misspelled signs and misplaced anger of the Tea Party, but psychologist Kirk J. Schneider says that we dismiss or diminish groups like this at our own peril. Schneider, the author of THE POLARIZED MIND: WHY IT’S KILLING US AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT (University Professor Press, 2013, paperback), has done an exhaustive study of extremist movements throughout history and he says it’s time for us to look more seriously at what he calls “the polarized mind.” In “The Polarized Mind: Why It’s Killing Us and What We Can Do about It,” Kirk J. Schneider Ph.D., calls for a new and deeper psychological understanding of our greatest political and social conflicts and those who drive them.

“You can see gradations of the ‘polarized mind’ at work in virtually all destructive political movements from Nazi Germany to Maoist China to our very own Tea Party. In fact, it is the pervasive malady of the 20 and 21st Centuries,” says Schneider.

How does the Tea Party fit in? Many among its ranks have seen their lives profoundly upended by economic, social, and political trends beyond their control. They tend to be middle class people who are mired in debt and have seen a sharp decline in their living standard due to the shift to a service-industry economy. They often face stiff competition for low-wage jobs and when they land them they may be confined to dull, meaningless work day after day. They resent any government help for people who are even less fortunate and train their anger on those who are the least responsible for their plight. And it’s not just an empty wallet that drives them. It’s also a sense of social dislocation. “I think many in this movement are embittered over the increasing complexity of contemporary life. They look at the 9/11 attack-which once would have seemed unthinkable-the decrease in church attendance in many places, the loss of two-parent households, gender equality, the lack of simple ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’ presentations of the U.S. vs. the rest of the world, and they feel profound existential anxiety-as if the ground beneath them is giving way,” says Schneider.

Although you won’t find “polarized mind” in any official diagnostic manual, for Schneider it’s crucial that the psychological community and the world at large rethink our ideas about mental illness if we are to understand the forces at play in the world. “When we think of mental illness, we think of a discrete and politically powerless group of people who have received a diagnosis, but if you look at the key criteria for diagnoses it’s abundantly clear that they describe vast swaths of the population, not a marginalized group,” says Schneider. Look, for example, at some of the traits of narcissistic personality disorder or psychopathy: A callous disregard for the feelings of others, the reckless disregard for the safety of others, a sense of entitlement, arrogance, a grandiose sense of self-importance. These traits are readily seen in the Tea Party and other extremist groups.

“No one can or should deny the historical forces that have shaped movements like the Tea Party, but to overlook or dismiss the psychological factors that are linked to them is to have less than a full understanding of what makes extremism tick-and how we can defuse it,” says Schneider. Recognizing the polarized mind when we see it is the first step.

Here is the reply I sent back to Lorna Garano:

"How DARE YOU send me this trash associating law abiding American citizens with Nazi Germany and Maoist China. I am a psychologist who has sympathy for my fellow Americans who are so “extremist” that they believe in lower taxes and the Second Amendment. Horrors!

What is “killing us” are polarized minds like Kirk J. Schneider Ph.D who is so narrow-minded that he thinks those who have different political beliefs than himself are the enemy and seeks to assign them with a “diagnosis.” What is truly extremist and scary to those of a more conservative or libertarian persuasion is that so many psychologists such as the one below are such political hacks for the Democratic Party. Please take me off your list of hate.

I am enrolled in the Queensland electorate of Griffith, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's old seat. I used to get a nice Christmas card from Kevvy every year while he was there. So I will be voting in the by-election caused by Kevvy's retirement after his recent defeat in the federal election.

The LNP (conservative) candidate for the by-election is Dr. Bill Glasson, a most energetic campaigner and an ophthalmologist by trade. His father, also Bill Glasson, was a minister in the long-running Bjelke-Petersen (conservative) government of Queensland. So the present Bill has name recognition.

I was sitting in my usual Buranda brunch destination about mid-morning yesterday when Bill and a campaign assistant walked in -- also seeking brunch. The assistant was a nice-looking young lady who might have been his daughter. She had "Vote Bill Glasson" written all over her t-shirt so she was at any event a helper.

Bill & Co. sat down beside a lady in a green dress. The restaurant was busy so some tables were right up against one another. Bill chose one such table. As the lady beside him got up to leave, she launched a furious verbal assault on Bill: Quite egregious behaviour in a restaurant.

I was too far away to hear what she was saying and I am pretty deaf anyway but a professional actor could not have done a better job of portraying rage and hate than this woman did -- finger pointing, tensed-up body and all other conceivable hostile body language. Bill just sat there. She gave up after a few minutes and walked out. She must have thought of more things to say, however, as she shortly thereafter came back into the restaurant and resumed her angry tirade at Bill.

It was a most remarkable assault on a man the woman did not know personally and who has never been a member of any government. She appeared to have been blaming Bill for something some government had done but why she blamed Bill for it was obscure.

When I had finished eating, I went over, shook Bill's hand, introduced myself as a Griffith voter and said I would be voting for him. I then asked him what the lady had been on about. He said it was confused but it was something about hospitals. All Australian public hospitals are in a mess so that might be understandable. The government that got Qld. hospitals into a mess was however the recently departed Leftist government. So again, why blame Bill?

I then said to Bill: "She was full of hate, wasn't she?". He agreed. Just his conservative political identity was enough to fire her up.

UPDATE: A reader has sent me the following story:

This happened to me while my family and I were in Orlando, Florida attending my nieces wedding. My father (85 yo) mother (82), sister (56), brother-in-law (64), my wife(49) and I (47) were out eating dinner at a sparsely populated Chinese restaurant.

My brother-in- law jokingly asked me "so how do you feel about Obama?", in response to a statement I said about taxation. I made no reply to this.

Shortly thereafter, a woman left the table near us very quickly and went to get the check rather than wait for it to arrive at the table she was sharing with a man.

The next thing I know, the fat, long haired man is towering over our table and he starts to bellow. He told us how sick to death he was of us right-wing fanatics and we had better get used to the leftist running the country. He told us how much he hated us homophobic, racist assholes and wished we were all dead.

Keep in mind, my brother-in-law is Puerto Rican/ Italian mix and my nephew is gay and we had mentioned nothing racial or about sex all evening. He just lit into us.

After I had enough, I got up and motioned for him to follow me outside. He asked why should he go outside. I replied that was were I was going to tune him up. He did not follow me outside. He was taller and heavier than I am, but not near as solid.

This is happening more and more in America. F*ck 'em, let them suck on knuckles. This being polite to liberal assholes only begets more abuse. End it swiftly and brutally.

I reproduce below a current news report derived from NOAA and GISS. You will see that continuing warming is proclaimed with no hint that the data might be troublesome to Warmism. It is classical warming propaganda much as we hear every year.

I have been naughty, however. I spent about 2 minutes on a Google search to find out what the actual figures were. Here is a quote from NOAA:

"The year 2013 ties with 2003 as the fourth warmest year globally since records began in 1880. The annual global combined land and ocean surface temperature was 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F). This marks the 37th consecutive year (since 1976) that the yearly global temperature was above average. Currently, the warmest year on record is 2010, which was 0.66°C (1.19°F) above average."

Do you see what they are doing? The differences in temperature that they rely on for a judgment that something was warmest are in hundredths of a degree! They treat unbelievably tiny differences in temperature that exist only as a statistical artifact as if they told us something! For instance they contrast the 2013 anomaly of .62C with 2010, which is .66C. The difference is only 4 hundredths of one degree Celsius!

Is there any point at which they would concede that a difference is too small to be taken seriously? Thousandths of one degree? Millionths of one degree? Medieval theologians used to debate how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Theology is alive and well among Warmists!

America's two top scientific agencies have released separate reports on last year's climate, confirming the global warming trend is continuing.

The American space agency, NASA, releases a climate report each year - alongside a separate report from its sister agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The two agencies collect their data separately and their reports show slightly different results. But the trend is clear. At least nine of the warmest years on record have happened since 2000.

According to NOAA, 2013 was the fourth warmest year for the planet since records began in 1880.

Ocean temperatures were half a degree Celsius above the 20th century average.

NASA says carbon dioxide is at its highest level in the atmosphere in 800,000 years, having risen from 285 parts per million in 1880 to 400 parts per million last year.

Unless current trends change, the world should expect each of the coming decades to be warmer than the last, NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt says.

He describes the warming of the past few decades as "unusual," and urges people not to judge whether climate change is happening or not based on random weather events like cold snaps.

"The long-term trends in climate are extremely robust," he said.

"People have a very short memory when it comes to their own experience of weather and climate, and the only way that we can have a long-term assessment of what is going on is by looking at the data."

Last year also marked the 37th year in a row with higher than average global temperatures.

In view of the great difficulty skeptics have at getting papers published in academic journals, one group of prominent skeptical scientists decided to set up their own journal. No problem, you would think. All sides of a debate should be aired.

But Warmists did not see it that way at all. They went all out to pressure the publisher (Copernicus) to ditch the journal -- which it did. Prominent Warmist James Annan is even proud of his efforts in that direction. He crows:

"Kudos to Copernicus for the rapid and decisive way in which they dealt with this problem. The problems at the journal were was first brought to my attention by ThingsBreak just last night, I emailed various people to express my concerns and the journal (which was already under close scrutiny by the publisher) was closed down within 24h."

The book burners are here! Such efforts by Warmists clearly have more in common with totalitarianism than with science and convey nothing so much as fear and panic. A commenter on his blog sums up the strange version of science behind such efforts:

"You've got to love climate science when you see episodes like this.

I think it is safe to say that in no other science do you see such overt power games played out like this.

It is clear that it is not just the retraction of a publication that is of primary importance here, it is the spin that comes off that retraction that is most important.

"Pour encourager les autres"

Since the ostensible reason given in the letter was that the publishers were "alarmed" at criticism of the IPCC it is obvious the lesson an observer should take is that any attempt to go out on a limb and "alarm" people must be shown to be wrong and is not to be encouraged.

You guys in climate must be so proud to have the best policed science that humanity has ever seen."

As I have pointed out at length elsewhere, there are many reasons why people can have hate in their hearts for the society around them. But those who have that hate are the Left. And it is that hate which makes them want to change us all.

The anger and hate is sometimes so strong that it is visible -- Mrs Clinton with TWO clenched fists. Even the Communist salute requires only one. The fist is the emblem of the Left. It tells you what they want to do.

But a major reason for the hate is ego. The hater thinks highly of himself and resents that the world does not give him the praise and rewards that he thinks are his due.

It is hard to know for certain how much Leftism is driven in that way. It is very evident in Leftist leaders but is it widespread among the voters? When people are questioned immediately after voting in Presidential elections, the reasons that Democrat-voters give for their vote seem to be founded mainly on profound ignorance of the facts and issues. Democrat candidates are blamed for what Republicans do and vice versa.

For all that, however, many ordinary people who favour the Left often do express the same resentment of the world that we see in Leftist leaders. I can warrant that from the many social attitude surveys I did in my social science research career.

As I also set out at length elsewhere, however, many Leftist leaders are not only egotists but are in fact the ultimate egotists -- psychopaths, people who have no real concern for other people at all -- people to whom only their own self-interest is visible. Though their psychopathy is "sub-clinical", i.e. it is subdued enough to keep them out of trouble with law enforcement and the mental health system.

So when both the leadership of the Left and a substantial part of their supporters are psychopathic, we clearly have one half of the political spectrum that is substantially insane. Beneath their superficial charm lies a serious mental defect.

That such a pathology has engulfed half of politics is of course extremely disturbing. My comment (during my research career) that psychopathy is often successful in various ways appears to have been confirmed in spades. It even appears in fact to have been reproductively successful, which is very alarming. We now have a substantially psychopathic population around us.

That psychopathy has been reproductively successful for many years now is not hard to fathom. As I have pointed out psychopaths seem to have a magic way with women. The women eventually get disillusioned but pregnancies often occur in the interim. And these days the children of such pregnancies will normally survive to adulthood. So there has been a gradual but steady drip of psychopathy into the population. And the "soft" penal practices of the current era have greatly facilitated that. Criminals are now rarely executed but are released back into the population to continue their mayhem. And a substantial number of those criminals are psychopaths.

No wonder our Leftist political opponents often seem to be off the planet -- JR

In early January 2006 the BBC held a sort of Old Fashioned Revival Hour in which top BBC people got together with top Greenie fanatics and helped prop up one-another's belief that Global Warming was the One True Faith. You can read about it here.

One little excerpt from the report of what went on there fascinated me:

"Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation, who argued there were only 100 months left to save the planet"

100 months is 8 years and 4 months and if we count forward from then we arrive at April 2014. We're nearly there! But the planet looks much the same as it did in 2006 so it looks like Simms is yet another Warmist false prophet.

But the planet may have a reprieve. In August 2008 Simms said we still had 100 months at that time! I wonder what refined calculations went into that revision?

Warmists are such clowns. Perhaps we should not berate them too heavily. Laughing at them is a bit like laughing at the disabled. Their mental fixations certainly disable their reasoning powers (if any).

This is much sooner than anyone expected. The .90 correlation between a gene set and IQ mentioned below is historic. Correlations don't get much better than that in psychology. The IQ deniers have always looked pretty silly in the light of the evidence but I cannot see that they have any room to move now at all -- JR

Factor Analysis of Population Allele Frequencies as a Simple, Novel Method of Detecting Signals of Recent Polygenic Selection: The Example of Educational Attainment and IQ

Davide Piffer, Interdisciplinary Bio Central, November 27, 2013

Synopsis

Weak widespread (polygenic) selection is a mechanism that acts on multiple SNPs simultaneously. The aim of this paper is to suggest a methodology to detect signals of polygenic selection using educational attainment as an example. Educational attainment is a polygenic phenotype, influenced by many genetic variants with small effects. Frequencies of 10 SNPs found to be associated with educational attainment in a recent genome-wide association study were obtained from HapMap, 1000 Genomes and ALFRED. Factor analysis showed that they are strongly statistically associated at the population level, and the resulting factor score was highly related to average population IQ (r=0.90). Moreover, allele frequencies were positively correlated with aggregate measures of educational attainment in the population, average IQ, and with two intelligence increasing alleles that had been identified in different studies. This paper provides a simple method for detecting signals of polygenic selection on genes with overlapping phenotypes but located on different chromosomes. The method is therefore different from traditional estimations of linkage disequilibrium. This method can also be used as a tool in gene discovery, potentially decreasing the number of SNPs that are included in a genome-wide association study, reducing the multiple-testing problem and required sample sizes and consequently, financial costs.

The Guardian has just put up a supposed dismantling of Lindzen's scientific expertise by two old hard-heads of Warmism. Nuccitelli in particular never accepts any fact that is detrimental to Warmism. He has always got some ad hoc reasoning that enables him to wriggle out from under it.

The article has provoked widespread derision from climate skeptics -- who accuse it of fudging the facts "hell West and crooked". But I gather that no-one is publishing their views in anticipation of Lindzen himself doing a rejoinder.

I did however have a close look at the article myself and when you dig down you find that all the "proofs" of Warmism that they quote go back to tendentious claims made by other Warmists. It's a case of Warmists quoting Warmists to prove that Warmists are right!

Let me give an example of that:

I was particularly fascinated by their claim: "The 15-year 'pause' myth? Completely debunked". Since even many prominent Warmists accept the pause as fact this is a good example of Nuccitelli refusing to retreat an inch from Warmism. No contrary evidence or argument can move him. He is the perfect dogmatist.

But what is the basis of his dogmatism in this instance? I followed back his links and his basis for rejecting the pause is a paper by Cowtan & Way which said that the orthodox HADCRUT record was erroneous because it left out the temperature record in areas where there was no temperature record -- such as parts of the Arctic and Antarctic.

So how do you get a temperature record from a place where there is no temperature record? Easy. You make it up! They used a statistical estimation technique called "kriging" to produce the missing figures but in the end it's all just a guesstimate. And that the missing areas all showed lots of Warming is just a coincidence of course! Since nobody doubts that the vast Antarctic has been cooling overall the kriging has obviously not captured the facts.

So you see the shallow ice that Nuccitelli is prepared to walk on to preserve his convictions. With him, there is no honest estimation of the truth based on the balance of the evidence -- just a determination to admit nothing and concede nothing contrary to Warmism -- JR

This latest fashion in psychological research was brought to my attention in an article by Matthew Hutson, a journalist with some qualifications in psychology. I made some rather scathing comments on Hutson's article here. In reply, Hutson referred me to the academic journal article which was the chief underpinning of his thinking. The article is "Social Class Rank, Essentialism, and Punitive Judgment" by Kraus & Keltner (2013). I thought I might offer a brief evisceration of it.

Essentialism seems primarily to mean belief in genetic determination. If you believe that a peron is as he is because of his genes, you are an essentialist. By that criterion conservatives are likely to be essentialists. And the authors clearly think essentialists are a bad lot. So who are these essentialists? In good Marxist fashion, the authors say that your social class position determines that. So they selected some statements to the effect that your class position was largely genetically determined and correlated that with your opinion of your own class position. I myself found that your subjective estimation of your social class position was a powerful predictor of other class-related variables back in 1971, so I have no quarrel with them on that score.

What they found in their Study I and Study II was however quite contrary to the Marxist theory. They found that there was virtually no overlap (a 4% overlap; r = .20) between their measures and your social class. High social class people were almost equally divided over whether class was genetically determined or not. So class was NOT behind "essentialist" beliefs.

That might have stopped our dynamic duo but it did not. In Study III they looked for other things behind "essentialism". The disappointing results of their first two studies do however seem to have disheartened them. Their next experiment was very low quality indeed. They told a small group of students some lies and then asked them questions about how strongly they would punish certain offences. If they were serious about measuring punitiveness, they might have used my approach instead of the very ad hoc approach they did use. Be that as it may, however, the main effect in their analysis was not even statistically significant, let alone meaningful.

Not discouraged, however, they went on to study 4, in which they used tricks to change what class people thought they belonged in. They then examined how these "manipulated" class perceptions related to punitiveness. They found some weak effects on type of punishment desired by people in these "manipulated" classes. In other words, even by abandoning reality altogether they still could not find much in the way of class effects.

With such disappointing results, you will be surprised at their conclusion:

"Social class is a primary determinant of rank in human social

hierarchy, and it profoundly shapes perceptions of the social environment".

Their data if fact warrant the following conclusion:

"Social class is a primary determinant of rank in human social

hierarchy, but it negligibly shapes perceptions of the social environment"

They knew what they were going to conclude from the beginning and stuck with that. All the experimentation they did was just window dressing that they did not even believe in themselves. There is no evidence at all that essentialists are the bad guys they were intended to be -- JR

About

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists. The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Some brief observations about Leftism

As a good academic, I first define my terms: A Leftist is a person who is so dissatisfied with the way things naturally are that he/she is prepared to use force to make people behave in ways that they otherwise would not.

Leftists think that utopia can be coerced into existence -- so no dishonesty or brutality is beyond them in pursuit of that "noble" goal

Leftism is fundamentally authoritarian. Whether by revolution or by legislation, Leftists aim to change what people can and must do. When in 2008 Obama said that he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America, he was not talking about America's geography or topography but rather about American people. He wanted them to stop doing things that they wanted to do and make them do things that they did not want to do. Can you get a better definition of authoritarianism than that?

And note that an American President is elected to administer the law, not make it. That seems to have escaped Mr Obama

That Leftism is intrinsically authoritarian is not a new insight. It was well understood by none other than Friedrich Engels (Yes. THAT Engels). His excellent short essay On authority was written as a reproof to the dreamy Anarchist Left of his day. It concludes: "A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means"

Evan Sayet: The Left sides "...invariably with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success." (t=5:35+ on video)

Some useful definitions:

If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one. If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed. If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone. If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him. If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down. If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church. A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!) If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

Death taxes: You would expect a conscientious person, of whatever degree of intelligence, to reflect on the strange contradiction involved in denying people the right to unearned wealth, while supporting programs that give people unearned wealth.

America is no longer the land of the free. It is now the land of the regulated -- though it is not alone in that, of course

Envy is a strong and widespread human emotion so there has alway been widespread support for policies of economic "levelling". Both the USA and the modern-day State of Israel were founded by communists but reality taught both societies that respect for the individual gave much better outcomes than levelling ideas. Sadly, there are many people in both societies in whom hatred for others is so strong that they are incapable of respect for the individual. The destructiveness of what they support causes them to call themselves many names in different times and places but they are the backbone of the political Left

The large number of rich Leftists suggests that, for them, envy is secondary. They are directly driven by hatred and scorn for many of the other people that they see about them. Hatred of others can be rooted in many things, not only in envy. But the haters come together as the Left.

Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it: the people in it most particularly. Conservatives just want to be left alone to make their own decisions and follow their own values.

The failure of the Soviet experiment has definitely made the American Left more vicious and hate-filled than they were. The plain failure of what passed for ideas among them has enraged rather than humbled them.

Ronald Reagan famously observed that the status quo is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” So much for the vacant Leftist claim that conservatives are simply defenders of the status quo. They think that conservatives are as lacking in principles as they are.

The shallow thinkers of the Left sometimes claim that conservatives want to impose their own will on others in the matter of abortion. To make that claim is however to confuse religion with politics. Conservatives are in fact divided about their response to abortion. The REAL opposition to abortion is religious rather than political. And the church which has historically tended to support the LEFT -- the Roman Catholic church -- is the most fervent in the anti-abortion cause. Conservatives are indeed the one side of politics to have moral qualms on the issue but they tend to seek a middle road in dealing with it. Taking the issue to the point of legal prohibitions is a religious doctrine rather than a conservative one -- and the religion concerned may or may not be characteristically conservative. More on that here

The Leftist hunger for change to the society that they hate leads to a hunger for control over other people. And they will do and say anything to get that control: "Power at any price". Leftist politicians are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at. Destruction is what haters do.

Leftists are consistent only in their hate. They don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt

A Leftist assumption: Making money doesn't entitle you to it, but wanting money does.

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money." --columnist Joe Sobran (1946-2010)

I often wonder why Leftists refer to conservatives as "wingnuts". A wingnut is a very useful device that adds versatility wherever it is used. Clearly, Leftists are not even good at abuse. Once they have accused their opponents of racism and Nazism, their cupboard is bare. Similarly, Leftists seem to think it is a devastating critique to refer to "Worldnet Daily" as "Worldnut Daily". The poverty of their argumentation is truly pitiful

The Leftist assertion that there is no such thing as right and wrong has a distinguished history. It was Pontius Pilate who said "What is truth?" (John 18:38). From a Christian viewpoint, the assertion is undoubtedly the Devil's gospel

"If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." - Ludwig von Mises

Because of their need to be different from the mainstream, Leftists are very good at pretending that sow's ears are silk purses

Among people who should know better, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists HATE success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.

A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.

Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.

Their threatened egos sometimes drive Leftists into quite desperate flights from reality. For instance, they often call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.

Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.

“Absolute certainty is the privilege of uneducated men and fanatics.” -- C.J. Keyser

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

THE FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY HAS DONE MORE TO IMPEDE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THAN ANY ONE THING KNOWN TO MANKIND -- ROUSSEAU

"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him" (Proverbs 26: 12). I think that sums up Leftists pretty well.

Eminent British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington is often quoted as saying: "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." It was probably in fact said by his contemporary, J.B.S. Haldane. But regardless of authorship, it could well be a conservative credo not only about the cosmos but also about human beings and human society. Mankind is too complex to be summed up by simple rules and even complex rules are only approximations with many exceptions.

Politics is the only thing Leftists know about. They know nothing of economics, history or business. Their only expertise is in promoting feelings of grievance

Socialism makes the individual the slave of the state – capitalism frees them.

MESSAGE to Leftists: Even if you killed all conservatives tomorrow, you would just end up in another Soviet Union. Conservatives are all that stand between you and that dismal fate.

Many readers here will have noticed that what I say about Leftists sometimes sounds reminiscent of what Leftists say about conservatives. There is an excellent reason for that. Leftists are great "projectors" (people who see their own faults in others). So a good first step in finding out what is true of Leftists is to look at what they say about conservatives! They even accuse conservatives of projection (of course).

The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal is that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions (including hatred and envy) run away with them and who are much more in need of seeing themselves as better than others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.

Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.

"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here. For roughly two centuries now, antisemitism has, throughout the Western world, been principally associated with Leftism (including the socialist Hitler) -- as it is to this day. See here.

Leftists call their hatred of Israel "Anti-Zionism" but Zionists are only a small minority in Israel

Some of the Leftist hatred of Israel is motivated by old-fashioned antisemitism (beliefs in Jewish "control" etc.) but most of it is just the regular Leftist hatred of success in others. And because the societies they inhabit do not give them the vast amount of recognition that their large but weak egos need, some of the most virulent haters of Israel and America live in those countries. So the hatred is the product of pathologically high self-esteem.

"With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society" -- Ann Coulter

Who said this in 1968? "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics". It was Sir Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Politicians are in general only a little above average in intelligence so the idea that they can make better decisions for us that we can make ourselves is laughable

A quote from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931–2005: "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here

Heritage is what survives death: Very rare and hence very valuable

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.

If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in a MONOGRAPH on Leftism.

You can email me (John Ray) here (Hotmail address). In emailing me, you can address me as "John", "Jon", "Dr. Ray" or "JR" and that will be fine -- but my preference is for "JR"

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)